The next five years- what do you see for the future of the hobby?

[goodtricks]

26 here....

[packs]

We will be able to buy all the E107s we want at T206 prices in just 30 years.

[Matthew H]

Originally Posted by packs

We will be able to buy all the E107s we want at T206 prices in just 30 years.

Packs, I disagree. It's natural for a collector, with any collecting habit, to desire something rare. It happens in every genre of collecting, from Car collecting to beanie babies. I don't think you will ever be able to buy an e107 for a t206 price.

I also don't believe the baby boomers make such a big difference (other then with the post war cards they grew up with)

The population is still growing and there is a finite amount of prewar available. Baseball is still popular, and it's still human nature to want to collect stuff.

[packs]

I'm mostly kidding but I do think there is some truth to what I said. Consider why baby boomers collect cards. It's a connection to their childhood. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a baby boomer who collects vintage now that didn't buy packs when they were a kid.

Kids aren't buying packs anymore. When was the last time you saw a box of Topps at the gas station, or the grocery store? Even if kids are collecting, think about whats being pushed at them. Autographed cards, limited edition cards, game used cards etc. The Allen Ginter and sets like it are popular but they're popular amongst the older crowd. What child is going to chase the Napolean piece of hair card?

I have always been interested in pre-war cards because I'm naturally interested in history. However, I am the only person my age I know with a collection and I'm no shut in. I don't see the numbers amongst my generation that could possibly replace the baby boomers. Less collectors, more supply equal less demand and lower prices.

It's good and bad. It's good in the sense that people will collect because they want to collect, not because the cards are worth money. It's bad because collecting circles get smaller and smaller. But hey, every card we pay a lot of money for now was once virually worthless. And people still saved them. That's what I love about the hobby.

[Matthew H]

I understand most of your argument however I'm not buying into the baby boomers thing. Most people with enough disposable income to buy high end cards are little bit older than you or I, but I don't think it falls into a category of generation, other then post-war collecting nostalgia.

19th century, for example, can't possibly carry some connection to any current collectors childhood yet prices are very strong. Since coming to this board, I've learned that some collectors don't even like modern baseball.

So it seems being a fan of baseball isn't even a prerequisite to collecting baseball cards.

The people you describe, being buried in debt in the future, already exist. Yet you still can't get an E107 for a T206 price. There'll always be one guy with more money than the next guy, and he will be the one who has the better cards. No big deal.

[packs]

I think the link to 19th century and pre-war for the baby boomers comes from collecting their childhood cards. I was trying to say a lot of people my age didn't have childhood cards. And kids born now will probably have an even more narrow window into collecting 10 years from now when they get to the age I was when I started buying packs.

[Matthew H]

I think you might be judging too much based on your own expereance growing up without cards. The hobby was crazy at the time, Upperdeck was a new company and people were RC prospecting like crazy. My dad was a non collector yet he still took me and my brothers to card shows because it was what kids liked. I personally don't remember anyone without a card collection during my time as a kid, and I'm surprised to hear from someone that didn't collect them. Oh well, you can make up for lost time now.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Matthew H

Since coming to this board, I've learned that some collectors don't even like modern baseball.

So it seems being a fan of baseball isn't even a prerequisite to collecting baseball cards.

There are a few of us, and I am one, that don't care for MLB today. It's for a lot of reasons starting back with the strike in 94-95 and the subsequent canceling of the world series. That being said I have played baseball or softball for 45 yrs and counting. I still play softball twice a week. I love the game....just not MLB. I love collecting stuff, the lithography of our cards, their values are interesting.....and in a big way, the friendships made.... Our family goes to a few AA local games and they are great. I think part of my issue is that it takes several hundred dollars to take a family to a MLB game now, with everything included. I would rather collect old baseball cards instead of spending hundreds to see a lot of whiny babies playing the game I love, but I know I am in the extreme minority. Liking "any" baseball certainly is not a prerequisite to be on the board.

As for our hobby in the next 5 yrs, I see it being strong as usual. Now is a great time to be collecting some niche cards as they are quite low relative to past values.

[Matthew H]

Hey Leon, sounds like you're still a fan of baseball though!

I get the whiney baseball players theme, but I just can't share the same sentiment,,, being a Dodger fan. My opinion, the cost is next to nothing to going Dodgers games, its always been that way. Especially when comparing it to trying to go to a Lakers game. (although you do need something to bite down on when it comes to paying for parking)

Anyway, I didn't mean for my post to be mean spirited toward anyone, I was just making a point that there are people in the hobby that don't care for baseball but still love the cards.

-Matt

[sportscardpete]

Originally Posted by packs

We will be able to buy all the E107s we want at T206 prices in just 30 years.

T206 old mill blue back prices!

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by packs

We will be able to buy all the E107s we want at T206 prices in just 30 years.

Ha, Ha! Would that that would be true, but I'm afraid E107 will follow the trend of coins, where rare and significant haven't even really been subject to price cycles. Instead, the price trend over decades for coin series analagous to E107's has pretty much been steadily upwards. Over the next five years or slightly more, I think that the focus will shift somehat from pre WWI cards to the twenties and early thirties, where there are quite a few very scarce to downright rare and significant cards available at mere fractions of the cost of pre WWI.

It's also going to prove to be a good time to buy some of the better (read "rarer" and "high grade") Williams and DiMaggio cards, as they are undervalued compared to Cobb, Ruth, Wagner, Mathewson and the like.

Eventually even key 50's and '60's cards will once again rise in value, perhaps even dramatically, once they begin to be perceived as undervalued in relation to those that preceeded them. There are, however, easily enough of these out there that their prices will be extremely subject to price cycles, going through ups and downs.

And there will be demand for key '80's and even '90's cards--its just that there are so many available that ecomonic principles demand that they will see very slow growth. The '89 Upper Deck Griffey Jr., for example, is a very significant card, but with somewhere around a million of them out there, and most of them in nice shape, the number of collectors seeking that card would have to rise astronomically for it to ever see a really appreciable rise in price. I like the stars and HOF'ers from the Topps Tiffany sets to see their day in the sun, as these were, IMO, the best of the mainstream cards produced during their time period insofar as relative scarcity and card quality are concerned.

Mantle values in general will depend upon whether the current trend to evaluate players based on stats going well beyond such traditional statistics as batting average continues. Those of you that think that Mantle was in any way inferior to either Mays or Aaron, during the time that all of them were playing, will be in for a rude awakening upon consideration of the statistics that more closely approximate run-producing ability. Mantle, for example, created approximately 212% of the runs of an average player per every 27 outs made OVER HIS ENTIRE CAREER during his era (by way of comparison, Lou Gehrig was at 200% for his career, during his more run-prolific era), while Mays and Aaron were in the 170-180% bracket--quite a distant second. While this is admittedly a statistic originating with Bill James, the Mick similarly wipes out the other two in OBPS, .978 for the Mick, compared to .941 for Willie, and .929 for Hank. While Mays and Aaron posted better career numbers due to better longevity, they were really never quite in the same class at producing runs during the time they were active. Mantle simply hit homeruns more often than they did, walked more, and scored more runs per game played (Aaron scored .659 runs per game played; Mays .689, and Mr. Mantle .698 runs per game. As Bill James has said, the number of runs a team will score is directly proportional to the number of runners they get on base. In this vein, Mantle's career on-base-percentage was .421; Mays .384; and Aaron .374. You will also find that if you take a trip to baseballreference.com and use their tool to neutralize for eras, Mantle's stats do not suffer at all in comparison to Gehrig. Given a chance to take any of the three in their prime without regard to longevity, an educated GM would take Mantle every time. I love the other two--they were among the greatest ever--but I'm sorry, they never stood on a level plane with Mickey Mantle in prime time! He was simply the best of his era.

Great thread--sorry I saw it so it so late!

Regards,

Larry

[Texxxx]

In 30-40 years the 1980's to 2000 cards will go up drastically.

We will be getting $.20 a pound for paper to recycle and that will make them worth something.